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Longmont's Carnegie Library reaches 100 years

By Scott RochatLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
01/26/2013 06:47:20 PM MST

Updated:
01/27/2013 11:12:50 PM MST

Bob Nyboer is the head of adult services for the Longmont Library and also its unofficial historian. He wrote a history of Longmont s libraries in 2007. To see more photos, visit www.timescall.com.
(
Matthew Jonas
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1991 -- Bond issue approved, including new library. Debate over either moving or tearing down Carnegie continues until 1994.

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Source: "Longmont Public Library 1907-2007; A Centennial History" by Robert Nyboer.

From its opening in 1913 to its close in 1972, the Carnegie was home to a growing collection of books, one that quickly consumed the small space available.

1914 -- 4,600 books

1930 -- 15,816 books

1940 -- 17,699 books

1950 -- 17,000 books

1960 -- 22,576 books

1970 -- 37,348 books

Source: "Longmont Public Library 1907-2007; A Centennial History" by Robert Nyboer.

LONGMONT -- It's not flashy. It's never been big. But for 59 years, it was THE library.

Now, as of today, it's the 100-year-old library.

That's right. Longmont's Carnegie Library has just finished its first century. And even though it hasn't been a library since the early 1970s, it's still an unmovable memory for many in the city.

"The Carnegie served well," said Bob Nyboer, the head of adult services for the Longmont Library and also its unofficial historian, who wrote a history of Longmont's libraries in 2007. His own office looks out on the simple sandstone-and-brick building, now home to The Longmont Channel.

Well, "simple" is one word. Others would say "plain."

"It's not one of my favorite Carnegies to look at," Nyboer admitted teasingly. "But the affection that a lot of people have for that building is quite obvious."

It would, at first, be a hard-won affection.

'The time will come'

Make no mistake. Longmont wanted a library. But getting there was a bit of a struggle. An early reading room, Library Hall, started with 300 books in 1871 and saw most of them gone in the first year. A follow-up effort by the Women's Christian Temperance Union in the 1880s was longer-lived, but continually struggled for funds.

"The time will come when a well-equipped public library will be considered nearly, if not quite, as necessary to the public interests of a town as good public schools," the Longmont Ledger argued in a 1905 editorial.

What was really wanted was a Carnegie, one of the many libraries endowed by industrialist millionaire Andrew Carnegie. And by 1907, the city even had a promise for one on decent terms -- Carnegie would pay for the building if the city would match 10 percent of the funds and acquire the land.

The land was the problem, Nyboer said. Not only was there a huge debate about whether to put the library in Thompson Park or in the downtown, but acquiring any land would mean a tax increase. And taxes were no more popular then than now.

"It failed by a vote of 225 to 75," Nyboer said. "They felt like a new library was an extravagance."

In the end, it took a private fund drive by the library board and the town's wealthier residents to raise the money. Carnegie sent $12,500 for the new building, which was dedicated Jan. 26 in a 90-minute ceremony and then opened on the 27th.

"They had over 200 visitors on that day," Nyboer said. "That was a lot for Longmont at the time. And a lot of people who voted down the tax increase for the library were probably some of the first visitors!"

That wasn't all that came in. The Carnegie Library was also given a portrait of George Washington and, oddly enough, a deer head by one of the town aldermen. The fate of the hunting trophy is unknown.

Tight quarters

Reading over a history of the library sees a lot of new additions: story hours, vinyl record collections, more and more books and magazines, even a bookmobile experiment in 1961. (Boulder County refused to pay to continue it, saying rural readers could easily get to a town library.) What didn't get added was space.

And space, in a library, is the most valuable thing of all.

"We had two offices," recalled Juanita Basey, who joined the library as a cataloger in 1969 and still works for the Longmont Library part-time. "One was tiny, about 10 by 10 at most, and had two desks. The other one was slightly bigger -- and it had everything else!"

By the 1960s, books were stored everywhere they could fit, including the coal bin, Nyboer noted. A drive-up book drop led into the furnace room. Basey had to do her cataloging work at a table in the public area; by that time, she said, there were shelves on top of the radiator.

When she started there, Basey recalled, the sex education books were kept in a separate section away from the main stacks. Not because of any public challenge, but because the shelves were already overflowing.

"I don't know who decided that that was the section that should move," she said, laughing. "But at the time, I remember thinking 'Oh, my gosh, I can't believe it!"

A push for a new library began in the 1960s and finally succeeded by 1972, though with severe cost overruns. Space would be eased for a while -- 22,000 square feet in the new building versus less than 4,900 in the Carnegie.

But by then, the Carnegie had become loved.

"It was used very heavily all the time," Basey recalled. "People were in and out constantly."

"How many Longmont children were introduced to reading in the confines of the old building?" Nyboer mused in his history of the Longmont library. "Many would bemoan the loss of the old building, but like the proverbial cat, the Carnegie would prove to have many lives."

Park place?

It was with the next library that the controversy came. In 1991, a $17 million bond issue for a new library and police station passed. And the architects designing the new library thought a small "pocket park" would make a perfect addition to the area.

One problem. It was planned for the site of the Carnegie.

"It was hot and heavy," remembered Leona Stoecker, who became mayor in 1993 when the clash had reached fever pitch.

A fight began that ran for more than two years. The City Council formally opposed making the Carnegie a historic site in 1992; a state board found it eligible anyway. An effort to vote it into landmark status and keep it for library purposes failed in 1993 by 62 votes. Proposals were made that ranged from the plausible (move the Carnegie to the park of the Prospect neighborhood) to the bizarre. Nyboer's personal favorite was the one that suggested making the building a dinosaur museum.

"It seemed so logical," Stoecker said of the Prospect pitch that she received. "We loved it and we wanted to preserve it, so we wanted to move it to Prospect. I don't know when the fireworks started -- before I got home?"

In February 1994, the fight finally reached a decision. Despite the potential cost of renovating the Carnegie -- the estimates at the time ranged from $42,000 to $500,000, Nyboer said -- the City Council voted 4-3 to restore the Carnegie and keep it where it was. Stoecker voted against; the votes in favor included councilmen Tom McCoy and Fred Wilson.

"It won't be demolished," McCoy said in a Feb. 16 Times-Call article. "Not with this council."

That led to renovation and eventually to having Longmont's public-access television station as a new tenant.

"We didn't want it to just sit there," Stoecker said "If you leave the building to sit, just deteriorating, you're not preserving anything. They (The Longmont Channel) just came along at the right time."

Hard-won at its start, the Carnegie had been hard-saved from its end.

But then, the Carnegie always was more than sandstone or even books. It had become memories. And those memories still get passed on by the longtime patrons, Nyboer said.

"I even get some of the folks who went to the Catholic school (St. John the Baptist, across the street) when they were little, that would come in and use the library," he said. "Still do."

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